


Come Back

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 10:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7218607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’ll do anything, give anything, to make sure he doesn’t wind up alone.</p><p>Unfortunately, you don't always get a choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back

He thinks about it sometimes; that Roadhog doesn’t need to be with him. The big man choses, over and over again, to remain loyal, and the thought makes Jamie grin fiercely to himself, hoping but unconvinced that this loyalty has a deeper, personal meaning.

It’s possible, ain’t it? That Roadhog stays because he wants too, not just because the loot is good? That he _likes_ Jamie, maybe the same way Jamie likes him?

The thought could consume him if he let it, and so it doesn’t do to think about it too often. Better to just acknowledge that ‘Hog is there and just keep thanking his lucky stars that he’s not alone. And he’ll do anything, give anything, to make sure he doesn’t wind up alone, too. _Anything_ he thinks, gripping tighter to Hog for a minute.

 _You hear that_ he thinks, to God or the Devil or the big Empty, whatever might be listening to a little twitch like him. _I’ll give anything. Do anything_.

Really it’s just typical, isn’t it? That someone else should get hurt but not him, nope, Jamison Fawkes walks away unharmed yet again. It doesn’t matter that he refuses to think of the possibility that this gut shot wound could be that bad, the fact of the matter is that it _is_ that bad.

It hurts terribly to think that he’d refused to voice his own devotion, that they had spent their last private moments before ending up in the fire fight fiercely arguing. Jamie had wanted to do something _fun_ , Mako wanted to lay low for another day or two; he had a bad feeling about this next heist.

A gut feeling, Jamie remembers him saying, and bites the inside of his cheeks hard to keep from laughing. It wouldn’t be funny laughter, that; it’d be that same shrill, panicky noise he’d made when ‘Hog had gone down. If he ever hears himself make that noise again, he thinks, he might just go mad from it.

But that was how it always went with them, when they knew a battle was coming. They fought or they fucked. Only the easy things, never acknowledging the dread they could both feel, or the concern, or that bright, undefined thing that spread between them when they came together.  Trying to define that thing was like trying to herd a cat; it seemed perfectly possible until you tried, and then it slipped away right through your damn fingers.

He doesn’t need to define it to know it’s real, a _real_ feeling. If that one wasn’t real, then how could the pain he felt now be so real?

“Don’t quit on me, huh, big guy,” he says, and there’s more pleading in his tone than he would like. He wants to sound upbeat and casual for Mako now (and let him be Mako now, let him be a man and not the impersonal thing he tries to make himself with that damn mask on); he wants to sound in good cheer, but all he sounds is desperate. “I ain’t even paid you proper yet.”

Mako’s eyes are dull and unfocused, his skin feverish and pale. He looks terrible, but Jamie won’t voice that, won’t even let it pass fully formed through his head. If the bigger man had been in good enough shape to get them away from the fight on his bike, surely he’d pull through from a little bullet wound through the gut?

Jamie knows what fear tastes like. He's washed his mouth out enough with it to gather permanent implants of sour, stale aftertaste in the crevices of his teeth. There isn't a taste in the world powerful enough to numb it; nothing can rinse it away. He grew up on fear, just like most kids in Junkertown, and he’s dealt with fear ever since. It’s a relentless rider. He feels it now, still pressing his fingers into that feverishly warm flesh, like Mako will just spring to back wellness at the gesture, just another moment, as the sun starts to rise from the east.

He has been here before, blank-eyed and tired and at a loss for what to do next. But he refuses the memory; he won't replay one agony over a present one. Mako is painted white and black in the shadow of this safe place, maybe iridescent because of the growing sunlight, maybe because he's coming back around in just another minute.

Because he has to – Jamie needs him to, is banking everything on it, wants the stupid bastard to grumble about priorities and payout, to be sharp and cutting, brutal efficiency and awesome offensive force. To protect him again, selfish Jamie; he wants his partner back so he doesn’t have to go back to fighting on his own

So he doesn’t have to be alone.

Jamison _needs_ Mako to come back to him, can’t let this separate them. He needs to do something more than sit around fretting and tracing idle fingers over hot, burning skin. But he’s just sitting here on the edge of this rock in the dim early light, and Mako is still breathing in fitful gasps, struggling just to breathe even though the real wound is low down on his stomach, just to the right of center. Following instruction, Jamie cleaned his companion up as well as possible and stitched closed the wound. He’d even patched up the grazes and washed out the scrapes and shallowest cuts.  

Now everything, every scratch and tear and gaping wound, is sealed closed – but for _what_ , what a fucking joke this all is – and there is no color to Mako at all. Even the bloody red disappears in this light, leaving him ashen and corpse-pale.

Something about the still and washed out form is magnetic, and he reaches out slowly, unsure even now, to brush his flesh fingers over Mako’s arm. The flesh is so cold now, and it’s wrong, and the sensation that rips across his heart is something like tearing, something like shattering. His hand wanders up, pressing with something like urgency as he seeks any hint of warmth or motion or _life._ And it’s not until his fingers are pressed flat against Mako’s chest, his digits splayed across unresponsive bare skin, that he recognizes that tearing, shattering sensation as despair.

It feels like everything is leeched out of him and into the vacuum laying on the blood soaked cot; all the hope and light and heat in him, sinking out into his fallen mate – and he’ll give it willingly if the chest under his hand will just rise again. A sound splits the shallow cave like desolation incarnate, and suddenly he’s curled over the prone form of his partner, forehead against the back of his own hand, whispering harsh pleas. The cynical pessimist that lives in the back of his head, the one that has kept him from ever admitting how much he cared for the other man out loud, asks what the point is. He ignores it.

“You’re going to come back,” he prays to the dark, “I’ll die if you don’t.”


End file.
